Well good morning, good afternoon and good evening, wherever you are in the world, hello and welcome to the Thursday 13th September edition of EV News Daily. It’s Martyn Lee here with the news you need to know about electric cars and the move towards sustainable transport.

Thank you to MYEV.com for helping make this show, they’ve built the first marketplace specifically for Electric Vehicles. It’s a totally free marketplace that simplifies the buying and selling process, and help you learn about EVs along the way too.

News in brief…

Tesla is enabling free supercharging for those in the path of Hurricane Florence: “We are temporarily enabling your car to access additional battery capacity as well as Free Supercharging in preparation for Hurricane Florence. We hope that this gives you the peace of mind to get to a safe location and will notify you before returning your car to its original configuration in mid-October”

A date for your diary, or rather 10 dates, for the Jaguar I-PACE eTrophy racing series to support Formula E. 15th Dec in Saudi Arabia, then Mexico, China, Italy, France Monaco, Germany and USA.

BMW said it will discontinue all diesel models for the U.S. in 2019 and moving to Plug Ins as a way to improve performance and lower emissions. They join Mercedes, Audi, VW and Porsche in dropping diesel

Crescent Electric studied 52 markets and named New Orleans the cheapest place to charge and drive an EV due to low electricity costs, whereas Seattle makes the biggest saving when jumping from fossil cars

And surprise surprise, an ongoing survey of 654 EV owners by ‘Flip The Fleet’ says they are the happiest car owners with 77% scoring them a 9 or 10 out of 10, loving the driving experience, low running and maintenance costs.

NEW ASTON MARTIN RAPIDE E

We now have more details from Aston Martin about their toe-in-the-water first electric car. Now I call it that because they’re only making 155 of them, but they’re not holding back on specs.

Along with two teaser images, we know it will have a 65kWh battery driving two rear motors, good for 200 miles on the new WLTP testing standard – which is still a little optimistic compared to absolute real world range but more accurate than the old NEDC.

They are building for speed, 155mph and 60mph reached under 4 seconds. They are redesigning the current Rapide S to make it more aerodynamic with less resistance to maximise range.

Andy Palmer, CEO Aston Martin, commented: “Environmental responsibility and sustainability is a global challenge faced by us all. As a career automotive engineer, I’m proud that the car industry is leading the way in finding long-term solutions and reducing harmful emissions. As Aston Martin’s CEO, I take particular satisfaction working with Williams Advanced Engineering and our other associated technology partners to bring Rapide E to reality. As our first all-electric production model, Rapide E will fast-track our knowledge and help us ensure the character and high-performance capabilities of our future EV models and enhance the unique qualities found in all Aston Martins as we know them today. Rapide E will also serve as a critical step on our path to re-launching Lagonda as the world’s first zero-emission luxury marque”.

First deliveries should be 2019 Q4.

C’EST BON! MODEL 3 HEADED ON A PARISIAN ADVENTURE

We’re counting down to the Paris Motor Show from 4th to 14th October. Tesla has a page on the official Motor Show website. “La mission de Tesla est d’accélérer la transition mondiale vers une énergie durable”.

That’s as far as my school French lessons got me, fortunately there’s an English button on the website so I didn’t have to bust out Google translate! “At the Mondial Paris Motor Show 2018, Tesla is showcasing Model S, Model X and Model 3. The Powerwall home battery will also be on display. This will be Model 3’s second appearance in Europe, before deliveries starts in the first half of 2019. Model 3 reservation holders will be informed about pricing and information specific to Europe at a later date.”

Elon Musk has tweeted previously that the Model 3 would be in RHD form by Summer 2019 so it appears that target it still being aimed at. The Model 3 made it’s first official visit to the UK earlier this Summer at the Goodwood Festival Of Speed which is where I got my first up-close look it, and my first impression without doubt was the single large screen. However after playing with it for 5 mins, it felt completely intuitive, so when I read those car reviews online which make a mention of the minimalism bear in mind I was sitting in a LHD model and it still worked in my head.

For the 200,000 Californians driving EV’s or Plug Ins, make the most of your carpool lane stickers. NBC Bay Area says: “Drivers who have a hybrid, zero emission or alternative fuel vehicle will need a red sticker to be in the carpool lane if they are driving alone. Current solo drivers with electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles have a green or white sticker, which allows them to drive in the diamond lane. But on January 1, those stickers will expire and will affect more than 230,000 drivers statewide.”

Whilst the overall Chinese auto market fell in August 2018, EV’s (or New Energy Vehicles to give them their proper name in China) continued their double digit increases. Total vehicles sales were 2.1million in August if you include all the trucks and buses, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

And even though sales of passenger cars, from sedans to SUVS were down, the bright spot remains…you guessed it, EVs. “In August, sales of NEVs soared 49.5 percent to 101,000 units, while production jumped 39 percent to 99,000 units, according to CAAM.” reports Shine.cn: “Sales of electric vehicles added 31.7 percent to 73,000 units while 28,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold last month, a jump of 130.8 percent from a year earlier. In the first eight months of this year, NEV sales surged 88 percent year on year to 601,000 vehicles. The production of NEVs surged 75.4 percent year on year to around 607,000 units in the January-August period.”

All the usual suspects in China are driving those numbers – BYD, SAIC Geely and Chery.

Can I talk about Shenzhen again? You know I have a love affair with Shenzhen, a city of 12 million people linking Hong Kong to the mainland.

Since they made a commitment in 2009 to go all electric, there are now 16,359 all electric buses there. That’s their entire public bus fleet running on electrons. And yes we know China burns a lot of coal for electricity, about 72% of all power generation, but because they’re more efficient than diesel, even running them on dirty-ish electricity has saved 48% CO2 emissions.

“According to the statistics from the Shenzhen Municipal Transportation Commission, the 2017 data shows a total reduction of CO2 emissions of 1.353 million tons. Furthermore, the annual emission of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, non-methane hydrocarbons and particulate matter was reduced by 431.6 tons.” reports itdp.org

The key has been government support for electric public transport.

China also has a bigger problem than most in terms of the peak requirement for power vs the overnight lows, and that’s exactly when all these buses charge.

FACTORY TOUR CHEERS INVESTORS

Getting a Tesla Gigafactory or Fremont factory tour would be a dream for me, but some investors from Worm Capital were fortunate enough to get a trip around Giga in Nevada, and now they’ve released a note with their observations. The internet seems to have gone with their headline today, that we’ll see “a battery cell cost of $100 per kWh by the end of the year.” That would be great news if it wasn’t old news. The most recent occasion that was confirmed was Elon Musk as the investor event where he said on stage that figure was on the cards by the end of the year at cell level, and $100/kWh at pack level, including all the electronics and ancillaries, by 2020.

The report did say, however, that Gigafactory 1 was the biggest producer of batteries by volume in the world. I think they mean cells because they say 200million are being made per quarter. That’s a current annual rate of 20GWh.

They said there was new automation coming from Grohmann Engineering in Germany. I would also just correct them, the company has long been renamed Tesla Grohmann Engineering since the acquisition of Grohmann. Specifically this will speed up, and lower the cost, of module production. Although the current bottleneck is paint shop, it was previously producing enough Model 3 packs, so this ensure Gigafactory doesn’t because an issue again. That’s also important because the Tesla Semi is stacking Model 3 battery packs and truck production is due 2020.

TESLA MOVING TOWARD IN-HOUSE BODY SHOPS

A story from earlier this week I just didn’t have time for, Tesla are moving towards in-house body shop repairs. I found this post on the TeslaMotors subreddit from user u/ekobres: “Today my Model 3 was courteously picked up, repaired, and delivered back to me completely fixed within 9 hours. Wow. The Atlanta body shop is headed by an experienced, dedicated Tesla manager who cares deeply about the mission, the customers and the cars. He takes pride in what Tesla represents, and strives to provide excellent service. In my case, I noted a panel alignment issue at delivery and contacted service to schedule getting it fixed. The service manager told me if I could wait a few weeks, I could have the work done by a new Tesla body shop rather than have them send it out to an “authorized” shop. He showed up at my work this morning with a loaner, had me sign a couple of forms and left with my car. He texted me when my car arrived at their shop. He texted me to let me know they corrected my reported issue. He texted to let me know they noticed my Frunk latch was out of spec and asked my permission to fix it. And then he texted to let me know my car was ready and met me with it (washed and vacuumed.) A few minutes later, I was back behind the wheel of my fully sorted Model 3. Tesla spent a fraction of what it would have cost to coordinate and hire a 3rd party body shop and a rental loaner – and the car was fixed by a knowledgeable Tesla employee who cares about their mission and their customers. I’m impressed.”

Tesla Body Repair Centers are available for light collision repair in the following cities.

With experience from Formula-E to Supercars, Ricardo has unveiled a new E-Axle transmission – they say it’s the best mix of efficiency, performance and cost. As any EV driver will recognise it’s a single-speed transmissions and for Ricardo, it’s only the first of a range of products to cater for rising demand for EVs. They say: “capable of accommodating both high torque and high input speeds, this advanced modular EV transmission will be revealed at the LCV event today (Wednesday). The E-Axle can be used in a wide range of installed orientations, and is equipped with high strength, lightweight aluminium casings that are ideal for direct integration into space-constrained environments. With our new E-Axle EV transmission, we are offering a highly adaptable solution that will provide an extremely cost-effective means of delivering high quality electric traction to the road. We look forward to supporting customers – from the established automotive industry to EV start-ups – with this flexible transmission product.”

And thanks to MYEV.com they’ve set us another Question Of The Week. Keep your comments coming in on email and YouTube…

Where do you go for information when considering buying an EV, or researching a specific make and model. Is there one trusted source you use, or do you use everything from news sites like InsideEVs, to YouTube vlogs to auto makers official website pages. What about when you want to know about things like charging or incentives?

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